rd
figure enough no doubt in tortoise-shell spectacles and striped pajamas,
but Nancy doesn't think so. As for him he simply knows he never will get
used to having her with him this way all the time; he takes his breath
delicately whenever he thinks of it, as if, if he weren't very careful
always about being quiet she might disappear any instant like a fairy
back into a book.

He kisses her.

"Good morning, Nancy."

Her arms go round him.

"Good morning, dearest."

"It isn't that I don't want to get up, really," she explains presently.
"It's only that I like lying here and thinking about all the things that
are going to happen."

"We are lucky, you know. Lordy bless the American Express."

"And my job." She smiles and he winces.

"Oh, Ollie, _dear_."

"I was so damn silly," says Oliver muffledly.

"Both of us. But now it doesn't matter. And we're both of us going to
work and be very efficient at it--only now we'll have time and together
and Paris to do all the things we really wanted to do. You _are_ going
to be a great novelist, Oliver, you know--"

"Well, you're going to be the foremost etcher--or etcheress--since
Whistler--there. But, oh, Nancy, I don't care if I write great
novels--or any novels--or anything else--just now."

She mocks him pleasantly. "Why, Ollie, Ollie, Your Art?"

"Oh, _damn_ my art--I mean--well, I don't quite mean that. But this is
life."

"Just as large and twice as natural," says Nancy quoting, but for once
Oliver is too interested with living to be literary.

"Life," he says, with an odd shakiness, an odd triumph, "Life," and his
arms go round her shoulders.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Young People's Pride, by Stephen Vincent Benet

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